Q&A draws curtain on extraordinary year with special episode

Neil McMahon

Q&A has been many things in 2015: entertaining, egregious, eclectic, enraging, enlightening - take your pick, and add unbearable if that's your view, and it certainly is for some. But on Wednesday night, drawing the curtains on an extraordinary year with an extraordinary special episode, it once again proved itself essential.

In this final outing, the popular program helped the ABC hit its home run of the year, taking over where the broadcaster's traumatic two-parter on domestic violence Hitting Home left off. Sarah Ferguson's brilliant documentary demanded exactly what the ABC delivered - a follow-up debate and discussion - and as we've seen before, the Q&A format is television's blueprint for such engagement.

Jessica Mauboy going to Eurovision

Q&A: Domestic violence 'we know what works'

A panel of experts discuss the impacts, factors and solutions to the national problem of domestic violence. Vision courtesy ABC

As has happened across this year, the most challenging and controversial of its eight years on the air, the program rose to the occasion when required. It did it the week after its near-death experience mid-year with the Zaky Mallah uproar; it did it in September, when it found itself live to air as Malcolm Turnbull rolled Tony Abbott; it did it two weeks ago, with a thought-provoking but sober exploration of the Paris attacks. And it did it again last night, with Julia Baird's deft performance as host and a stellar panel ensuring much was added to a subject just when you thought Ferguson's startling series had said it all.

That's a brief sample. It's an eccentric mix, to be sure, and a blend not always perfectly executed - some episodes are dull, some frustratingly formulaic when the political point-scoring takes over, some guests are a waste of panel space - but there is nothing else like it on television, and nothing else is even trying. (Nine's The Verdict, which also said goodbye to 2015 last night, never lived up to its hype as a commercial-friendly Q&A clone, proving in its ineptitude only how seamless the ABC original makes a difficult format appear.)

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Q&A is compulsory viewing for many, and a part of the national conversation even for those who never watch it (or who claim they never do - not watching Q&A has become a famous Twitter bragging point). And putting famous and powerful guests aside, what often sets it apart is not the answer part of the format but the question element, where ordinary people have their say.

In a year-ending interview with Fairfax, Tony Jones identified this essential part of the show's impact, citing the post-Paris program as an example. "Incredibly well-informed, passionate, interested, engaged people, new and interesting ways of looking at issues," Jones said. "The ones that really break the bank are people who no one's heard of ... real people engaging live in some big and passionate public debate."

That such moments have the impact they do is, of course, grist to the mill of the Q&A critics - who deem it, even in the normal run of things, a left-wing love-in (or "lefty lynch mob" in Tony Abbott parlance). And through both accident and carelessness, the program has at times all but handed its head on a platter to its enemies - quite literally in the case of the Zaky Mallah controversy, after which Jones was depicted beheaded by cartoonist Bill Leak in The Australian.

But therein lies the rub. Nothing Q&A could do, intentionally or otherwise, could hope to match the hysteria of its critics, especially when the program's real and imagined sins are so obviously being hijacked to further established anti-ABC agendas. And then there's the rule of (media and political) thumb: if they're talking about you that often and hate you that much, chances are you're doing something right.

In 2015, Q&A mostly got it right. When it got it wrong, it recovered nimbly. After its mid-year stagger, it enters its ninth year on solid ground. In Jones' own words, no one would hope for a repeat of this year's firestorm, but the program itself aims to be front and centre.

"I don't think the program should or ought to be involved in public controversy of the kind we were involved in this year. So I'd certainly hope that wouldn't happen. But I hope we're involved, deeply involved, in controversial, big public debates. That is important."